Stolen (26 page)

Creeping cautiously across the patio area outside the kitchen, with the blanket in her hands, she made for the side gate. It was about six foot six high, with a frame above the gate which had the barbed wire nailed on to it.

Lotte tossed the blanket up over the barbed wire and climbed the gate. It was easy enough as in the hedge to the side of it were many places where she could put her feet. She was over and down the other side in just a minute; all there was left now to contend with was the gravel drive.

She had never been good at walking barefoot on stones and she crept forward along the side of the house wincing at every step. But however painful it was, it was so good to be free, and she planned to run first to the phone box and call the police, then hide in someone’s front garden until they arrived.

But as she got to the end of the side wall of the house Fern stepped out in front of her, quickly followed by Howard.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Fern asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

They were both in dressing gowns and slippers. But they had the studied calmness of a couple who had taken their time to come and stop her. They’d probably heard her getting out of the window, but let her strain herself trying to get away.

It was a crushing defeat. Lotte had prepared herself for the possibility they might hear her on the gravel and come out of the house after her, but she hadn’t expected them to be lying in wait for her. And there was no chance of being able to push past them for they stood blocking her path and they were poised to restrain her forcibly.

Lotte screamed then, as loud and for as long as she could. Howard caught hold of her and slapped her face to shut her up, but she fought him and kept screaming until he bundled her inside the door.

‘That’s a fine way to thank us for our kindness to you,’ Fern said once the door was closed and locked. ‘Trying to slip out of here like a thief in the night!’

Lotte shouted abuse at them then. She no longer cared if they hit her, starved her or even tortured her. It all came out, how they’d fooled her into thinking they cared about her, that they were cruel, calculating and depraved people. But she saw how mad they really were then for they just looked at her in wide-eyed astonishment, not understanding why she saw them in such a way.

‘You hide behind all that religious claptrap,’ she screamed at them. ‘You’ve been selling babies! That’s the lowest, worst kind of crime imaginable. And now you’re forcing me to have one for you. But even if that perverted act does make me pregnant, you’ll never get the baby, I’ll make sure of that. I’d sooner see it go into care than be brought up by a couple of maniacs like you.’

Fern slapped her around the face then, knocking her back against the wall in the hall. ‘You ungrateful little bitch,’ she yelled, and yanked at Lotte’s hair, making her scream again with pain. ‘I saved you from that man in Ushuaia and nursed you back to health.’

Howard manhandled Lotte back into the basement room, pushing her down the stairs. ‘We’re disappointed in you,’ he said before he locked the door on her. ‘Now you’ve lost all your privileges.’

Looking back on that night when she was incandescent with rage at what Howard and Fern had done to her, Lotte now knew that it was impossible to stay at that level of anger for very long, especially when food was withheld. She held out for three days, spitting at them, shouting abuse and hurling things when they came in, but hunger, fear and loneliness finally got to her, and she caved in.

It seemed incredible to her now, but when Fern said she would ‘forgive’ her, Lotte actually began to believe she was the one at fault. She didn’t even lash out when Fern said they had to try again that night for the baby before her fertile period passed.

Howard came down to the basement room in his pyjamas without Fern, carrying a large vodka and orange juice for Lotte. The following morning when she woke she was certain the drink had been laced with a drug. She remembered Howard sitting on the bed talking about how he loved sailing, the first time she’d ever heard him talk about anything with some passion, then it all became hazy. She had a faint recollection of being cuddled and of responding slightly to his caresses but she couldn’t remember anything more.

She woke later, fumbled for the light switch and found it was half past three in the morning. Howard was gone and she had the telltale stickiness between her legs. She got up at once to wash herself but she was so wobbly on her feet she went back to bed without even climbing the stairs to see if he’d locked the door.

On one or other of those two attempts, Lotte got pregnant, and she didn’t know whether she was relieved or horrified. It was a relief not to have to submit to Howard any more, and to know they wouldn’t hit her again, but then it was terrifying to know she had a baby growing within her which had been forced upon her.

Fern was beside herself with joy from the moment the first test was positive, and there were moments when that joy washed over on to Lotte because Fern was so kind and loving towards her. But even with whatever it was they slipped her daily to keep her docile, from time to time outrage bubbled to the surface and Lotte would plot her escape.

It made sense to pretend she had accepted the situation fully and even felt pleasure at giving Fern and Howard their baby, for that would mean they’d relax their vigilance. But in fact they watched her more closely than ever. On warm, sunny days they’d allow her into the garden, but they stayed with her constantly. She had her meals in the kitchen, she could watch television in the lounge, but they kept the doors and all the windows except the small fanlights locked all the time. Even the telephone was locked into the study and they carried the keys for everything on their person. If they went out she was put back in the basement room.

They had said originally that they were intending to take her to the States for the birth, but they appeared to have abandoned that plan. Lotte guessed they realized she would make a scene the very minute she was in a public place, and they couldn’t take the risk she might expose their racket.

Lotte had fully expected that Fern would take her for a medical check-up before long. But the weeks slipped slowly by and Fern still didn’t seek a doctor’s advice. Lotte began to fear that she never would, perhaps for the very same reasons they didn’t dare try to take her to America.

‘Shouldn’t I go to a clinic?’ Lotte asked one morning, trying very hard to look as if she had no motive other than checking the baby was healthy and a good size. ‘I mean, I could have high blood pressure or one of those other problems women get.’

‘You are doing just fine,’ Fern said. ‘I know a great deal about childbirth. I used to be a nurse.’

Lotte would tell herself that all she had to do was to keep chatting, laugh, smile and make happy jokes and lull them both into security so they would slip up. But it didn’t happen. They still kept the front door locked, the phone safely in the locked study, and when they went out she had to go down to the basement room.

Dale stirred on the bed beside Lotte and opened her eyes. ‘Have you heard anyone up there while I’ve been asleep?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Lotte sighed. ‘I would’ve woken you up if I had. Go back to sleep – I’m sure they’ll come tomorrow.’

‘What will we do then?’ Dale asked, her voice cracking with fear.

‘We’ll have to play that by ear,’ Lotte said.

‘Have you remembered having the baby?’ Dale asked in little more than a whisper.

Lotte sighed deeply. ‘Oh yes, Dale. That came back as soon as I was in here again.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’ Dale asked, her dark eyes deeply troubled.

Lotte lay down beside her friend. Remembering what she’d been through had been bad enough, and she really didn’t want to have Dale asking her questions, but now that Dale’s life was in danger she owed it to her to explain what it was all about. ‘I guess I’ll have to,’ she said reluctantly, then, taking a deep breath, blurted out the story of her two nights with Howard.

‘The absolute bastard!’ Dale exclaimed. ‘But you were in here all the time you were pregnant? And where did you have the baby?’

‘Right here,’ Lotte said. ‘On this bed!’

Chapter Thirteen

Lotte remembered that her pregnancy seemed interminable; just long dreary days with little to do and nothing to look forward to. As the months dragged on she felt so apathetic that she eventually even lost the energy to try to outwit Howard and Fern.

Back in September, once the summer tourists had gone home, they would take her out for walks. Howard would drive them somewhere isolated where they weren’t likely to run into anyone. But he had bought a child’s restraint, a piece of webbing with a wrist band round each end. One went round his wrist, the other round hers.

After the first two outings, Lotte realized this could be the opportunity she’d been waiting for to get help. So she wrote a letter explaining her plight, asking the recipient to contact the police and come and rescue her. On the next outing she had it tucked into the pocket of her dress and she looked eagerly for someone to pass it to, or somewhere to leave it where it would be found.

Unfortunately Fern and Howard made sure they didn’t walk near other people. Lotte guessed that even if she said she needed to go to the toilet Fern would check first to see there was no one else in there and check again once she’d come out.

That day they went to the beach at West Wittering, and as it was grey and chilly there were few other cars parked up. But while they were walking on the beach, the sun came out, and by the time they got back to the car park, there were a lot more cars. Fern and Howard seemed quite relaxed after the bracing walk, and in a moment when they were talking together and not looking at her, Lotte managed to stick her letter against a car’s windscreen.

Fate was not on Lotte’s side, however. Fern glanced back, saw the envelope she hadn’t noticed earlier and suspected it was Lotte’s work. After she’d retrieved it and read the contents she was absolutely furious, and that evening she ranted and raved at Lotte, demanding to know how she could be so selfish as to run away from them and steal Howard’s baby.

‘Me selfish!’ Lotte exclaimed incredulously. ‘It is you who have stolen everything from me. My liberty, and my womb to grow a child I don’t want! You are cold-blooded monsters! If you and Howard wanted a baby to love, you should have gone through legal channels to do so, not hijack someone and keep them prisoner. But what makes me angriest of all about you is that I believed you were kind, decent people. How could I have been that stupid?’

Fern slapped her hard around the face, and as further punishment Lotte was pushed back into the basement again. They kept her there for a whole week. Her meals were brought to her, she was given books to read, even some embroidery to do, but she wasn’t allowed upstairs or out into the fresh air at all.

A week of isolation was enough to make Lotte realize she must pretend to be contrite to get through this. She had no chance of escape from the basement, and she needed fresh air and some company to keep her health and sanity too. She cried a bit and told them she was sorry for what she’d done and that it was just because she felt frightened and terribly alone.

Fern’s attitude would have been laughable under any other circumstances for she seemed to believe that offering money was the cure-all for absolutely everything. She said that as soon as the baby was born they would be taking it back with them to the States and they were going to give Lotte a thousand pounds to start a new life.

Lotte didn’t want a thousand pounds. She didn’t want to be pregnant either, and steadfastly refused even to consider that the baby growing within her was any part of her. All she wanted was her freedom. But as she got to around the fifth month and she felt the first tiny movements, like holding a butterfly in her hand, all at once she didn’t feel quite so detached.

She realized that however repugnant its conception had been, the baby was just a helpless innocent who had to be protected from maniacs like Fern and Howard. Lotte didn’t for one moment envisage keeping the baby herself; she hated its father far too much for that. But if it was humanly possible she intended to see it was placed with the right adoptive parents, and that Fern and Howard went to prison for the crimes they had committed.

As the pregnancy advanced Lotte would put her hands on her swelling belly, feel the strong movements within and pray silently for divine intervention.

It was ironic that she chose to find faith at the time Fern and Howard had dropped all pretence of being religious. They no longer had prayers and Howard didn’t read from the Bible. But Lotte had found comfort in praying after the rape, and even if her captors’ recent treatment of her should have made her feel prayer was futile and God a myth, she needed something to hang on to. And in the absence of worried parents looking for her, God was the only being she could call on.

She asked Him for a miracle, that Fern or Howard would leave the front door keys somewhere where she could grab them; that the police would turn up with a search warrant, or that her captors would suddenly be shocked by the enormity of what they had already done, and intended to do, and just let her go.

Sadly, Lotte knew she couldn’t count on a miracle. She was terribly afraid of what lay ahead, both the pain of the birth and the rush of natural maternal emotions she guessed would come with it. She suspected too that once the baby was born, she would actually be in mortal danger. Fern might say that if Lotte went to the police with her story, no one would believe her, but she was too intelligent to truly believe that. The only way she and Howard could be sure the true story would never come out was by killing her.

Somehow Lotte had got to escape.

Christmas passed like any other day, except Fern made a little more effort with the dinner and drank a lot more than she usually did. Lotte pointedly asked them in the morning if they were going to church – she rarely missed an opportunity to taunt them about their beliefs.

When they first moved down here Lotte had asked if they were going to attend the local church, but they said the Church of England wasn’t to their liking and that they preferred an Evangelical form of worship. That, as it turned out, was just an excuse not to go to any church, and all that endless praying they’d done on the cruise ship, in London and then here was a facade they hid behind to create a holy, trustworthy image. They didn’t bother to hide behind it now, and it was clear their faith was as non-existent as their morals.